Musician Patience Namadingo has questioned procedures used in collecting royalties from radio stations and telecommunications companies on behalf of musicians and he has vowed to take Copyright Society of Malawi (COSOMA) to task.
According to Namadingo, he has already engaged auditors and lawyers to conduct an audit into the process of collecting and calculating royalties.
Writing on his Facebook page, Namadingo said he is not a registered member of COSOMA but they collect royalties on his behalf.
“75% of my Music is not registered with COSOMA though they are responsible for having collected whatever my music is worth in Malawi since 2008. They collect from radio and TV play “they say” after DJ’s tick some boxes after each play “they say”. I have been to radios no one ticking the said boxes. What a scam. I’m yet to see these documents soon,” he said.
He also dragged telecommunications company Airtel Malawi, saying he received payment for caller tunes but he has never authorized Airtel Malawi to use his music as caller tunes.
“Still Airtel was playing/selling my music and paying through COSOMA. Who knows how much they really sold the music as compared to how much they were paying the creator? Just here is what we have decided to pay you after not consulting you. All this through COSOMA who I hope has been given the right by the copyright act to collect the money on my behalf without my consent,” said Namadingo.
He then declared war on COSOMA and companies like Airtel Malawi and added that he is ready to lead other artists with similar grievances.
Last month, COSOMA disbursed royalties are from the Blank Media Levy for the period of July 2020 to December 2020. According to COSOMA, 3,640 works and a total of 1,055 artists have benefited from money amounting to K212,984,478.01.
The highest earning artist received K2,166,541.98 while Namadingo was one of fifteen artists whose royalties hit K1 million.
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